Peony and Rose

After moving into our new home in Calgary, I have been digging and landscaping in our backyard over a decade. The short four-month-no-frost season each year and the warm confusing Chinook wind in the winter could not stop my love for gardening at the foot of Canadian Rockies through numerous failures and fruitful perseverance. Out of hundreds of hardy plants in my garden, my favorites are various Peonies and Alberta Wild Rose. In the early mornings of mid-July I always pick some fresh peonies and put them on the kitchen table. The fragrance mixing with the green tea vapor, I enjoyed the moment of reading a book by the bay window that frames abundant roses waving in the Alberta sharp blue sky, listening to the birds singing on the purple Choke Cherry trees, watching wild rabbits sitting in the lawn and nibbling my Blue Bell buds, and chipmunks hopping among the apple trees and Saskatoon berry scrubs.

Sensing this would be the last summer in Calgary, I tried to hold on to the fond memory into the photos of my garden almost every beautiful morning. In the mean time, I also dream to have grape vines, lilac bushes, orange trees, fig trees and many other exotic plants in my Q8 garden, while my husband teased me, "Maybe the only thing you can grow is cactus over there." Well, if there were no dreams, there would not be any that come true.